In this interview, Neal Gorenflo (founder, Shareable), Michel Bauwens (founder, P2P Foundation), and John Restakis (author, Humanizing the Economy) speak with Enric Duran. Duran is a Catalan anti-capitalist activist, best known for his act of “financial civil disobedience” announced on September 17, 2008, in which he took out half a million Euros in bank loans and distributed the funds to anti-capitalist movements. As it was never his intention to pay these debts, but instead to stir debate about the unfair legal advantages afforded to the powerful financial elite, he was soon labeled “Robin Banks,” and faced with a lengthy prison sentence. The resulting legal actions and his subsequent seclusion have left him living virtually underground, although he maintains selective contact and has stated that he may return, contingent on a variety of factors. Despite his precarious legal status, his work continues undiminished in the Catalan Integral Cooperative (CIC), which describes itself as a “transitional initiative for social transformation from below, through self-management, self-organization, and networking.” Here is Enric Duran talking about his work and life.

Put the body-monitoring tool down, turn around, and slowly walk away. Just because something is measurable doesn’t mean you should measure it, especially if there’s no guarantee it will improve your quality of life. I’m not a technophobe—far from it. These days, I juggle many professional balls, so I gladly rely on my arsenal ofRead More

The deep changes necessary to accelerate progress against society's most intractable problems require a unique type of leader - the system leader, a person who catalyzes collective leadership.

At no time in history have we needed such system leaders more. We face a host of systemic challenges beyond the reach of existing institutions and their hierarchical authority structures. Problems like climate change, destruction of ecosystems, growing scarcity of water, youth unemployment, and embedded poverty and inequity require unprecedented collaboration among different organizations, sectors, and even countries. Sensing this need, countless collaborative initiatives have arisen in the past decade - locally, regionally, and even globally. Yet more often than not they have floundered - in part because they failed to foster collective leadership within and across the collaborating organizations.

There's a lot to like in this article and much to contemplate. I particularly like the 3 core capabilities of see the large system, further reflection and more generative conversations, and shifting from reactive problem-solving to co-creating the future.

"System leaders like Baldwin and Winslow understand that collective wisdom cannot be manufactured or built into a plan created in advance. And it is not likely to come from leaders who seek to “drive” their predetermined change agenda. Instead, system leaders work to create the space where people living with the problem can come together to tell the truth, think more deeply about what is really happening, explore options beyond popular thinking, and search for higher leverage changes through progressive cycles of action and reflection and learning over time. Knowing that there are no easy answers to truly complex problems, system leaders cultivate the conditions wherein collective wisdom emerges over time through a ripening process that gradually brings about new ways of thinking, acting, and being.

For those new to system leadership, creating space can seem passive or even weak. For them, strong leadership is all about executing a plan. Plans are, of course, always needed, but without openness people can miss what is emerging, like a sailor so committed to his initial course that he won’t adjust to shifts in the wind. Even more to the point, the conscious acts of creating space, of engaging people in genuine questions, and of convening around a clear intention with no hidden agenda, creates a very different type of energy from that which arises from seeking to get people committed to your plan."

We need to expand our definition of diversity to include the weird—a group often maligned and avoided. These are people who appear to us as different, strange, and even offbeat; they just don’t fit in.

There is potency and innovativeness in certain kinds of weirdness that can help businesses thrive.

The key for leaders is to figure out how to support weird people so that they create—not destroy—value for the company. Some of these people have stifled their offbeat creativity out of social fear, camouflaging their true selves because they think it’s not appropriate at work to be as they really are. They leave essential parts of themselves at the office door.

Fantastic piece by @jhagel @jseelybrown @tamaraamoylova with help of @duleesha about tribes learnings > must read

"By cultivating talent within their community and building a robust ecosystem of external partners, the tribe has accelerated its ability to learn, adapt, and grow stronger"

and

"In this world of the Big Shift, learning, rather than efficiency, can be a key to success. Organizations need to learn and evolve as rapidly as the world around them. By creating environments, processes, and structures focused on enabling workers to learn faster, true learning enterprises can accelerate performance improvement.

A learning enterprise engages workers’ passions, relaxes control, and embraces experimentation. In so doing, firms may develop resilience, defined by Joshua Cooper Ramo as the ability to learn and get stronger from each unexpected challenge instead of crumbling under pressure from the rapidly changing environment."

Knowmads works around the concept of Learning Spaces, and the ideia that students are capable of taking control of their education. Which means that you must be willing to have the unknown ahead of you, and a very entrepreneurial profile.They have a coworking space, with tools and materials to test and create prototypes, that all “students” have acess to. And give you two of the most important and most negleted gifts education can give you: Tools to build what you love, and freedom to actually do it.

A very astute analysis by Leo Panitch, which gives historical background to the emergence of Syriza as a movement, and looks at the geo-strategic importance of this first victory against austerity politics.

This is a fascinating 'classic' HBR article from 2002, written by Diane Coutu on the rather elusive (but highly valued) quality of resilience.

Coutu suggests that resilience can be learned (although its not straightforward) and she identified that three qualities that help to define people's abilities to be able to get through periods of great adversity and bounce back after major setbacks:

The ability to Face Down Reality and see things as they really are rather than with rose-tintFinding meaning and purpose in times of adversity that building a bridge to a better imagine future stateA habit of ritualised ingenuity - being able to improvise solutions and workarounds when presented with challenges

According to one of her interviewees, " More than education, more than experience, more than training, a person’s level of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails. That’s true in the cancer ward, it’s true in the Olympics, and it’s true in the boardroom.”

The ‘Robin Hood of the Banks’ strikes again. This time the aim is to create a worldwide cooperative to develop and expand a new economy of the commons. By Pablo Prieto and Enric Duran Some revolutionary activists have an … Continue reading →

"There’s still an underground. Today’s underground is analog, not digital. It’s not fix after fix of pure pleasure by the click. It’s not heaven. It’s hell. It’s made of suffering, passion, discomfort, heresy, struggle, the fall, damnation. Not hearts, likes, fans, high scores, and smiley faces.

Slavoj Žižek is brimming with thought. Each idea sprays out of the controversial Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist in a jet of words. He is like a water balloon, perforated in so many areas that its content gushes out in all directions.

Sign into the online Seats2meet interface, list your skills and talents, take a seat in one of the 61 physical spaces at the reserved time, connect with a network of hundreds of by-chance coworkers doing the same as you, then sign out at the end of your reserved time.

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